"Key player": Legal scholar says Hope Hicks' hush-money testimony could be "devastating" for Trump

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is expected to take the stand in Donald Trump's New York hush-money criminal trial — and legal experts say her testimony could be pivotal to the prosecution.  

Last year, Hicks met for several hours with prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office, according to NBC News. They allege the former president falsified business records around a hush-money payment the former president's then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film start Stormy Daniels near the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.

Hicks served as Trump's campaign press secretary at that time, and because of her position as one of Trump's most trusted aides, her testimony at the criminal trial, which begins jury selection Monday, could be "devastating" for him, Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor and former New York prosecutor, told Salon.

"Hicks was a fixture in Trump’s 'inner circle,'" he said, speculating that "given her status, she very likely was a key player in the frantic discussions between Trump, Cohen and David Pecker of [American Media Inc.] about the bombshell report that Stormy Daniels was about to go public about her sexual affair with Trump, and the efforts they made to keep her silent by paying her off."

In 2019, an attorney for Hicks said that she had not known about the hush money payment until it became public. But, in an affidavit for Cohen's federal criminal case, an FBI agent who had been investigating Cohen said he believed Hicks was involved in the payment negotiations with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, over her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, NBC News notes. 

The affidavit outlined that the negotiations began after the Trump campaign grappled with the Oct. 7, 2016, release of Trump's "Access Hollywood" hot-mic tape, in which he's heard professing that he can grope women without consent. 

“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford's attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” the affidavit said.

"Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story," the FBI agent added in the document.

Given Hicks' role on the Trump campaign, her involvement in both in-person and phone communications with Trump and Cohen about the "emergency" Daniels' claim of an encounter would pose is "likely," Gershman said. 

Court records noted that Hicks called Cohen at 7:20 p.m. on Oct. 8, 2016 — their first call in weeks — for a four minute conversation, with Trump having joined the call seconds after it began, according to NBC News. Hicks and Cohen spoke after Trump left the call, and afterward Cohen called Pecker, the president of AMI.

Moments later, Howard, AMI's chief content officer, phoned Cohen. Cohen then called Hicks and spoke with Pecker again. At 8:03 p.m., Cohen began what would be an eight minute phone call with Trump, the unsealed federal court documents indicated, per NBC News. 

Court records also show Trump and his former fixer speaking twice on Oct. 26 — the same day Cohen wired the $130,000 that would eventually be sent to Daniels' attorney to an escrow account.

Trump has denied sleeping with Daniels and denies committing any wrongdoing. He has pleaded not guilty to charges in Manhattan and dismissed the district attorney's case as politically motivated.  

Cohen and Daniels are expected to be key witnesses in the case but Hicks will also be "important," former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Salon, noting concerns with the credibility of both key witnesses. Cohen, who in 2018 pleaded guilty to charges related to the hush money payment, is an "admitted liar" whose cross-examination will be "brutal" as a result, while Daniels, having been "paid to keep quiet," presents "her own credibility issues," Rahmani explained.  

"So Hicks is going to be a better witness, at least from a credibility standpoint," he said.

Hicks could also be "particularly helpful" for the prosecution because, as an ex-Trump employee, "she is less likely to be subject to suggestions that she is biased against him," former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade told Salon, explaining that her closeness with Trump may make the jury find her testimony "particularly credible."

Hicks testified before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee in 2019 that she was not involved with the hush-money discussion, adding that she informed the FBI that she did not, "to the best of her recollection," learn of Daniels' allegations until early November 2016.

The Democratic chair of the committee questioned the "apparent inconsistencies" in Hicks' testimony after the FBI affidavit was unsealed in 2019. Shortly after, Hicks' lawyer, Robert Trout, rebuffed reports claiming Hicks' involvement as "simply wrong," according to NBC News. 

Based on Hicks' congressional testimony and reports about her meetings with the FBI and testimony before the grand jury that investigated the aftermath of the 2020 election, Rahmani said he's unsure exactly "how much she knows" and if she'll be able to provide "more substantive testimony" than speaking to phone calls happening and a series of calls occurring on the days of interest.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Even then, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said on X, formerly Twitter, that Hicks' history of speaking with prosecutors and officials "suggests she'll be forthcoming" with what she knows if she's called as a witness in the Manhattan trial. 

In an interview with the FBI, Rubin said, Hicks indicated that "the only other time" she had seen Trump as angry as he was when special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed was "when the Access Hollywood tape came out during the campaign.

Other instances of Hicks' willingness to speak came during the 2019 congressional testimony where she explained that her phone call with Cohen on Oct. 8 was about rumors of a different tape said to be of Trump in Moscow "with Russian hookers, participating in lewd activities" and that she called to ask him to contact TMZ, which she had been informed may have the tape, Rubin explained.

Hicks also recognized that she publicly denied, at Trump's direction, a relationship between him and Playboy model Karen McDougal — whose silence about alleged sexual encounters Trump is also alleged to have bought — and admitted that she had told "white lies" while acting as a communications aide though said she had "never been asked to lie about matters of substance or consequence."

"But perhaps most important is what she didn't say," Rubin said, noting that Hicks declined to answer questions about her time at the White House, leaving anything she learned as its communications director "off limits." 

"Will it remain so at trial, especially after all the litigation about executive privilege and who controls it? Nope," she added. "And the DA's office could be seeking her testimony as much for what she saw/heard in the WH as for what she understood before the '16 election."

Hicks' testimony, then, could pose a considerable threat to the former president, legal experts told Salon. McQuade said that the ex-Trump aide could provide the court with "firsthand eyewitness testimony" about any observations she had about documents Trump signed or statements he may have made about their purpose.

Such testimony, Gershman added, would be crucial evidence "that Trump knew the peril he faced and concocted the payoff scheme to keep Daniels silent."

Rahmani also expects Hicks, should she be called to the stand, to "corroborate" Cohen and Daniels' testimonies that phone calls and payments were made and that the involved parties had discussions about the Enquirer, Daniels and McDougal. Though it may not amount to "direct evidence" that the calls were about the hush money payments, he said, it would "certainly" be "circumstantial evidence" consistent with other witness testimony.

What Hicks' proximity to the former president, Cohen and the situation at the time make "clear," Gershman added, "that if Hicks testifies, and if the jury believes her, it would be devastating evidence against Trump and make a conviction much more certain."